New IPA President Tells Industry To Embrace Creativity

The new president of the IPA has warned that the advertising industry in the UK is losing its creative touch. Addressing the IPA members’ lunch with his inaugural speech this week, Bruce Haines warned that hard work was needed to stay ahead.

“We need to do much, much more to promote the quality of our work in order to ensure we maintain our lead,” he said. “What clients want from agencies is engaging, persuasive, attention-grabbing, powerful, great creative work.”

Promoting advertising’s “creative star quality” would be the mission of his two-year presidency, he said. He urged the industry to avoid the “formulaic” and instead look towards innovation and experimentation. “We have become too defensive about what we do. So desperate to be seen as a “grown-up” business that we have relegated the most persuasive facts about the British advertising industry – that it is the most innovative, exciting, sophisticated and creative in the world,” he said.

Throughout his tenure he will work with the Creative Director’s Forum to identify ways in which creative people could increase their involvement and influence within the IPA and will also set up a Future Services Working Party to produce recommendations on the future structure of the organisation.

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